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• Iñaki Egaña. Mr. Egaña is a respected historian and writer from the Basque region of Spain. In March 2006, Mr. Egaña traveled to the United States to conduct research for a book about Basque author Mario Salegi, who was a target of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Upon disembarking the plane, however, Mr. Egaña and his children were interrogated, detained for 24 hours, and forced to return to Madrid. The government has provided no explanation for Mr. Egaña’s exclusion.
• Haluk Gerger. Professor Gerger is a Turkish sociologist and journalist. He was jailed by Turkey in the 1990s for his writing about Turkey’s Kurds. Twice during that time, in its 1994 and 1995 Country Reports on Human Rights, the U.S. State Department cited Professor Gerger’s treatment as an example of the misuse of antiterrorism legislation to stifle freedom of expression. In 1999, when Professor Gerger was on trial again for his writings, the U.S. issued Professor Gerger and his wife 10-year, multiple entry visas. In October 2002, however, when Professor Gerger and his wife arrived at Newark airport, border officials informed them that the State Department had cancelled their visas. The government has provided no explanation for Professor Gerger’s exclusion.
• Adam Habib. Professor Habib, a South African national, is a prominent human rights activist and public intellectual. Although he earned his PhD in the United States, when he attempted to visit the United States in October 2006 for professional meetings, he was interrogated for seven hours at the border and then told that his visa had been revoked. After U.S. organizations filed suit to challenge his exclusion, the government notified Professor Habib that he had been denied entry on terrorism-related grounds. It still has not has not informed him, however, of the specific legal or factual basis for its decision. The evidence strongly suggests that Professor Habib has been excluded not because of any connection to terrorism but because of his political activism.1
• Riyadh Lafta. Dr. Lafta, an Iraqi national, is Professor of Medicine at Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University. In the fall of 2006, Dr. Lafta applied for a U.S. visa in order to attend a speaking engagement at the University of Washington that was to take place in April 2007. His visa application was denied. Although the government stated that the denial was the result of a “miscommunication,” the circumstances strongly suggest that Dr. Lafta was refused a visa because of conclusions he had drawn in a 2006 article regarding the number of civilian casualties in Iraq.
• Tariq Ramadan. Professor Ramadan, a Swiss national, is a professor at the University of Oxford and, in the words of Time magazine, “the leading Islamic thinker among Europe’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants.” In 2004, he was offered a teaching position at the University of Notre Dame; only days before he was to begin teaching, however, he was told that his visa had been revoked under a provision that renders inadmissible anyone who has “endorse[d] or espouse[d]” terrorism. After U.S. groups filed suit, the government abandoned the accusation that Professor Ramadan had endorsed terrorism. It continues to exclude him now, however, under the INA’s “material support” provisions. We believe that the material support provisions do not apply to Professor Ramadan, and the evidence strongly suggests that he has been excluded not because of his donations but because of his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy.2
• Rafael de Jesus Gallego Romero. Father Gallego is a parish priest from the village of Tiquisio in North-Central Colombia, where he ministers to miners and peasants, facilitates community support initiatives, and runs a local radio station. Father Gallego is also a vocal critic of government-supported paramilitary units acting on behalf of multinational mining corporations. In the fall of 2008, Father Gallego received invitations to travel to the United States to address universities, activist organizations, community radio stations, and churches. The U.S. government simply failed to adjudicate the visa. Father Gallego eventually learned from the Provincial Jesuit, who has ties to the American Embassy, that his visa was going to be denied “for national security reasons,” but he has never received a formal notification that his visa was adjudicated, let alone an explanation of the grounds on which it was denied.
• Dora María Téllez. Professor Téllez was a leading figure in Nicaragua’s revolution against the brutal Somoza regime, and has served in her country as a government minister, political activist, and professor. She has also been a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. In 2004, she was appointed Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American Studies at Harvard’s Divinity School and Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. When Professor Téllez attempted to enroll at a language class in California in preparation for that post, however, her student visa was denied on the ground that she had previously engaged in terrorist acts, despite the fact that she had been granted visas to enter the United States in the past.

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